


Crusher's Paradox

by RunestoneOne



Category: Star Trek: The Next Generation
Genre: Alternate Universe, Angst, Drama, F/M, Friendship, POV-nonhuman, Psychic Abilities, Romance, Science Fiction, Women Being Awesome
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2012-04-25
Updated: 2012-04-24
Packaged: 2017-11-04 06:55:51
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,566
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/391028
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/RunestoneOne/pseuds/RunestoneOne
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Chapter One of a novel wherein Data discovers his true calling. Set in 2374, during the Dominion War. 'Explosions' describes the Prime Cause impelling Data on the path to full emotional maturity.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Crusher's Paradox

**Author's Note:**

> Some tags apply to things barely hinted at in the first chapter. Further developments to come.

Prologue:

The arboretum glowed with gentle tones of rust and tan, lit with the ripe peach hues of a Vulcan sunset. Qastal plants wove around rocks carefully seated in sand basins. The cascading networks of coppery green spiced the air, a scent like grass mixed with citrus. Fifty meters beyond, the viewport’s bejeweled darkness formed a perfect backdrop for the serene and alien stillness.

Keiko O’Brien studied her work with satisfaction, the viewing stone warm against her back. The arboretum now curved around a full third of the saucer section on Deck 17. The huge new Vulcan bay was a diplomatic effort, the Enterprise carrying the living seeds of peace between the Federation and the Romulans.  Keiko’s eyes were drawn again to the arrangement of viewing stones in the center, her satisfaction deepening into longing, for these foamed poly-alloy “mock-rock” stones resembled those of the temple garden from her home in Japan.

Lieutenant Barclay and the other systems engineers had worked hard to shape the contours of the Vulcan desert. Terms like ‘gravitometric load balancing’ and ‘manual inertial damping’ peppered the air, a language Keiko did not share. Their children squatted amongst the new greenery, or clambered on the viewing stones as parents chatted. An impromptu celebration spilled across the new sands.

Lieutenant Allison bent to talk to his daughter. “Making a new desert for Vulcans and their Romulan cousins is like fertilizing qastal.” he gestured to the plants which surrounded them, “Our work enriches the ground on which peace can grow.”

Lieutenant Barclay laughed. “Yes, indeed. Both diplomacy and gardening require lots of manure.”

Keiko smiled. She screwed the lid back on the container of companion microbes designed to protect the dry-loving plants from the moisture of human exhalations. She hoped that her own daughter, would, in time reap the results of their diplomatic planting.

“I’ve got five left.” Zari patted the soil around her plantings, the folds of her pink headscarf like petals of a desert bloom. She looked up. “Do you think they’ll like it?”

Fourteen year old Zari often dropped by, begging something simple to do with her hands. Gardening 'grounded her,' the physical effort a counterbalance to the mental challenge of her advanced mathematics studies. Even her mentor, Data, approved.

“If the Vulcans like it, they’d never let us know.  But I do believe they will find it … restful,” Keiko replied with deep satisfaction. In a week, diplomats would arrive on board from Vulcan and when they did, the Enterprise would offer them a small corner of home.

“But will the Romulans like it?” Zari sounded doubtful.

“I don’t know. I don’t know much about Romulan gardens,” Keiko replied. The alliance between Romulans and the Federation was tenuous, and fragile. They had so much to learn about each other.

Beneath the sounds of conversation and children squealing, Keiko heard a rasping, furtive sound on the far side of the viewing rocks.  She poked her head around the arc of wind roughened rock. Five meters away, a man in engineering red stooped in front of the stelae of the Vulcan God of Peace. He seemed to be burying a small, weighty object under the pathway.  Keiko neither recognized him, nor the object he thrust beneath the soil.

“Excuse me, can I help you?” she called out, as she stepped past the viewing stone.

The man looked up. Keiko caught a flash of startlingly violet eyes and dark curly hair before he grimaced.

Flames blossomed, engulfing him. 

Keiko tumbled through the air, any further words torn from her by the force of the explosion.

 

 

Chapter One

The horrifying hiss of depressurization shocked Keiko back to awareness.

 _Hull breach!_ She thought. _Structural integrity field failure!_

Her arm, shoulder to wrist, stabbed with pain. She breathed in, then gasped and winced again. Keiko struggled against dizziness, fought to rise. The hull-breach hissed, high and sharp. Hazard lights blinked, disorienting her. Strobing light made it seem like the qastal plants jerked across the deck, the image flashing on and off as they were sucked towards the outer hull.

Zari had not been hit by the force of the explosion.  She crouched by Keiko’s side, pointing. Keiko could not hear her over the ringing in her ears. Suddenly, the girl darted out into the maelstrom and disappeared.

 _“Zari!”_ Keiko screamed.

Sand heaved and rippled as if churned from below. It lifted into the air, whipping through the crack in the viewport, drawn into the black vacuum of space. Keiko squinted through a rising tide of red-stained debris. Her eyes watered, aching. She gripped a rough edged rock to pull herself upright.

Bodies  tumbled and broken on bloodied sand. Blood and bone and meat.  A few still crawled, straining to reach their children. Keiko fought her way upright.

The shriek of depressurization grew louder. In moments, the viewport would shatter, voiding them into space – or, just as bad, bulkheads would seal off that section of the ship, stranding them as their air ran out.

Keiko grabbed a child she could only half-see in the rising tide of debris. She thrust the small body into Barclay’s arms.  Blood leaked from Barclay’s ears, his face was gashed. He staggered for the exit carrying one child and towing another. Keiko felt her way along the inside bulkhead, blinking tears and sand from her eyes, pushing whoever she could rouse. “Head for the corridor!” she shouted, then stumbled. 

  _Zari! Where was Zari!_

Her feet found a body. Keiko knelt to feel if it was alive. Even here, on the far side of the bay away from the explosion, her questing fingers found blood-wet damaged tissue and raw bone. It sickened her. But it was not Zari.

Four or five adults burdened with children struggled past her. Keiko turned her back to the door one last time, shading her eyes against the torrent, frantically scanning for her young charge.

 _There!_ Halfway around the curve of the ship a figure crawled hull-side, low to the ground, the flare of bright pink cloth illuminated by flashes of the hazard lights. The gangly young woman dragged a flat shard of rock behind her.

 _“Zari, no!”_ Keiko screamed. Zari was going to try blocking the rupture. It was a dangerous operation for adults. Far more dangerous for a slender adolescent. And if she stayed to hold the plug in place... if the viewport shattered, if the emergency bulkheads went down….          

There was no time for Keiko to attempt repairs herself, no time to race the sixty meters to Zari and drag her out of harm's way before the bulkheads cut off escape, no time to do anything but flee for her life. The exit was only an arm’s length away.

She looked back to Zari. Then Keiko then darted to the lab on the other side of the exit. There, she kept aerosol 'mock-rock,' used to Vulcano-form the contours of the new bay. Maybe, just maybe, she could buy time for a rescue. It might just hold the viewport together. Or it might still buckle...but Keiko could not abandon Zari.

Keiko stumbled into the lab, limping as pain lanced through her side. She ransacked the storage bin, throwing equipment aside until she could grab the bright orange can. The sound of the hissing grew louder, a growling, threatening roar. She sped from her office, terror lending her feet wings. _“Zari!”_ she screamed. The sound was snatched from her lips.

 Zari turned to shield her face from the torrent of debris, blotting her eyes with her headscarf, wind half lifting her off her feet.

Keiko pitched the bright orange canister in the girl's direction, an impossibly long shot. The winds of depressurization caught it, the can tumbling end over end to smack the hull beside the girl.  Zari grabbed it. For a second, the onrushing air rippled, the roiling mist of red soil thinned, and they could see each other clearly. The girl's chin lifted, and she thrust it defiantly in the direction of the exit, a sign for Keiko to _GO!_ Zari's brown hair streamed free around a stubborn face, an expression so like Data’s that Keiko choked back a pained laugh. 

Warning klaxons began to howl. They had only seconds before bulkheads would slam down. Keiko could not wait to see if the desperate fix would work. Grimly, she limped toward a group of three small bodies a few meters away, a race against lowering bulkheads. She struggled to draw breath, flinging sand and debris away in blind desperation as she scooped them up, limp and heavy in her arms.

She hobbled toward the exit. Vulcan sand scoured her face raw. The hissing screeched into the hypersonic, then stopped as Zari slid the rock shard over the breach. Keiko had only meters to go.

_It was too late._

Zari held the shard of sculpture over the fracture with her shoulder. White lines raced along the viewport’s crystalline lattices, micro-fractures tinkling and groaning as they spread.

Keiko would not give up. Where could she take the children to hide?

 Zari uncapped the can and freed the nozzle. She squirted foamed composite onto the viewport, racing to cover it all even as stress fractures frosted over the transparent aluminum.

It might only buy them seconds.

A memory flashed, something Keiko had seen while rummaging for the canister: the incubator. Used to germinate cold weather plants, its door opened inward, the duranium frame sturdy enough to hold air even against hard vacuum.

She couldn’t make it to Zari.  But maybe she could save the three children she carried. If she made her legs move fast enough. If the blackness flickering at the edges of sight didn't claim her. If she could reach the incubator before Zari's makeshift patch failed. If the knife stabbing her side didn’t kill her. Keiko fought her growing exhaustion to run for shelter, the children heavy in her arms.

And if she made it to the incubator, would it hold enough air to keep them alive?

 Keiko was damned if she'd let Zari's sacrifice be in vain. With a last burst of effort, Keiko fell through the wreckage of her office, stars shooting at the edges of her vision, her lungs burning, _burning_.  She crashed through the incubator door, shoved aside racks of seedlings, then slammed the latch home.

Keiko hunkered down in the wreckage, in the cold. She panted as she pressed her leg against the base of the door. Just maybe she could block any air leakage with her own body, and preserve a few precious breaths of air.

Silver racks and ruined plants blurred in the dim light. Keiko cradled the unconscious children in her arms.  And waited.

***

_Stardate 2374 Chief Medical Officer's Log: To date, over eight hundred Enterprise personnel have been checked for cross-species pathogens. All have tested free of Choriocytosis. In another four days, all Enterprise personnel will be certified free of pathogens, inoculated against the Linneaus para-virus, and cleared for Vulcan contact._

 Crusher heard a muted 'krump,' a tremor felt in the soles of her feet. She looked up from her report. Two repair-techs had dragged a defective bio-bed from the wall. She frowned, uneasy.

Seconds  later came the brassy honk of klaxons.

The comm bleeped. “Explosion on Deck 17, sections 21 Alpha and Beta” Picard said, tersely. “The arboretum.”

“Casualties?” 

“One moment,” Picard said. “Reports still coming.”

The comm crackled with chatter. Bridge officers tallied reports with sensor readings while Crusher powered up the bio beds, instructing the repair crew to shove the defective unit back together, stat!

That had been an explosion she felt through her feet. The arboretum? It didn't sound good. Crusher punched in the all-call for medical personnel.

 “Internal sensors in that section are malfunctioning. Reports indicate four known dead, site reports tally seven injured, and unconfirmed number of missing, estimated at five,” Picard finally replied. “Casualties will arrive in Sickbay shortly.”

“Hull breach?” Her abdominal muscles tightened at the thought.  Explosive decompression was almost always fatal.

“Only partial. Atmosphere in that section down to 720 milibars and dropping, external bio-matter readings indicate possible personnel loss through a hull rupture. Those sections are now closed off by bulkheads. Data is on his way with a task force. Security is locking down the area as we search for the cause.” Picard's voice hardened. “Beverly, brace yourself – some of the casualties are children.”

***

Geordi tapped the LCARS panel, then grunted. _“What a mess._ That section’s structural integrity field is down, atmospheric pressure is at 61% and dropping, and there’s no way to tell how long the viewport will hold. And there’s too much bio-matter haze. Given the amount of aerosolized tissue, I can't be certain of casualty positions. There's no way to isolate life signs for beam-out.”

 “It will take at least thirty minutes to seal the breach with internal or external plating.” Data motioned three engineers in EVA suits toward the console. He pulled up the arboretum schematics. “Before internal sensors failed, they indicated possible survivors, here, to the left of the entryway and across the bay, beneath the viewport. I believe survivors are also resident in the cold-climate incubator in the Botany lab, six meters to the left of the entryway. We can beam engineers in to tag the survivors for intra-ship transport – then complete the cleanup …” he grimaced, unwilling to describe the retrieval of fragmentary human remains.

Geordi shook his head. “Nice idea – but if that viewport blows, we risk losing our engineering team as well.”

Data reached for a clip of transporter tags. “Then beam me into the corridor on the far side of the bulkhead, lower the pressure so I can safely force the door to the arboretum. Then I will repressurize the section and extricate the survivors.”

Geordi zoomed in on the structural integrity display.  “Can you move fast enough to tag them before a complete breach?”

      _After the battle of Wolf 359, every hand was pressed into service, every qualified man into an EVA suit.  They searched the ship’s graveyard for survivors. Fragments of living quarters, engines, nacelles caromed randomly in the aftermath of destruction._

_It was Data who found the survivors of the USS Tolstoy. The gunney-sergeant, sealed inside a battered torpedo casing. A pair of female ensigns, small enough to wedge themselves in impossibly tight weapons lockers, all three battered, capillaries exploded, half dead but still clinging to their breathers. The Rigel-Class scout had lost its escape pods, so they had improvised._

_Ship’s parts wheeled wildly, crashing into each other, fragmenting. A massive slice of hull plating arced toward them._

_A hasty tag and tow: the bright glitter of the transporter beam._

_Three saved.  Three precious human lives saved._

Data nodded solemnly.  “Yes.  Yes I can.”

“Understand, Data” Geordi’s voice lowered, “that beaming in could put you in…in the middle of a survivor.”

Data had performed far too many tasks in situations humans could not function, was troubled by the thought of witnessing more human suffering. Yet as he gazed at his human friend’s warm brown face, he found himself saying, “I will do what I must.”

 

Data did not find Geordi’s image a pleasant one.  Data shook his head, his lips stretched thin as he hefted the emergency atmosphere canister, and mounted the transporter pad.  More memories intruded as the familiar sight of engineering faded into blue sparkles.

            _The dark interior of the Tolstoy’s saucer section was lit only by sharp blue sparks and his palm beacon. Grav-field offline, Data floated amidst debris. Shards of metal spinning away at his touch. Something gelid struck his face as he maneuvered through a tangle of severed cables._

_Blood. Human blood, blooming scarlet against gray metal._

Data solidified in the corridor outside the arboretum. The sparkle of the transporter faded from his vision, leaving him with an anomaly that buzzed and stuttered in his positronic net, then faded to a quiet 'click.' Data voided his ‘lungs’ and activated his scanner, searching for life signs on the other side of the arboretum door.

 _What was this feeling?_ _Dread?_ _Horror?_

Once, such memories had carried no emotional connotation. The extraordinary services that Data was asked to perform came at no emotional expense. But now his emotion chip added feelings to each new memory as it was retrieved.

As he waited for the corridor's air pressure to equalize with that in the arboretum, Data grew afraid. Afraid of becoming damaged. Afraid of ending. Afraid for himself, afraid for all the wounded beyond the door.

Despite the temptation of resentment, Data kept faith with his role, his service to his crewmates. Despite the temptation to believe that as an android, he was often given no more emotional consideration than a trichorder. Despite acknowledgement that the hardest tasks often fell to him.

 _It is my choice to serve,_ Data thought. _It is my service that defines me._

The air in the corridor hissed slowly away.  Scans showed biological residue widely dispersed inside the arboretum, life-signs fading, atmospheric pressure now reading 49% of standard and still dropping. 

Data wondered if he should turn off the chip. Would that make him more efficient, less distracted? Pose less risk? Or would refusal to admit unpleasant feelings keep him less than human?  

Death, humans called their form of cessation. And they drew strength from a sense of spiritual continuity despite the ending of the physical vehicle from which consciousness arose. 

Data had no such luxury. He was on, or he was off. For him, there was no sense of continuity if his positronic net powered down. If he stared into that black void of unknowing...held himself firmly to the task, as Counselor Troi had once recommended...what did he find in the concept of cessation that troubled him?

Being sundered from humanity. _The thing he feared the most._

Data was afraid of the solitude implicit in death – the warmth of human connection slipping away, humanity moving ever onward in its bright expansion, his cold husk shucked off as detritus, a forgotten remnant, meaningless, inanimate. Alone.

At the thought, his attentional drivers and sensory systems activated to high alert, his fluidics shunting to a protected core, his skeletal servomotors powering up as if he faced a genuine emergency. But unlike humans, he could not release his fears via breath-work and positive imagery. Instead, Data grappled with them. He would cling to his dream of becoming human no matter what it took.

_No, not cling. I will aggressively pursue what I chose to become._

Data would struggle for a new expression of human behavior: Courage. 

The all-clear light blinked. The klaxons were almost quiet with so little air to carry the sound. Data thrust his fingers between the two halves of the arboretum door and pushed. He felt as much as heard the door's metal squeal he broke the mag-lock. Data forced his way through, pushing the door apart with a precisely calibrated amount of force, his skeletal servos taking the brunt of the effort.

 Data stepped into the arboretum scanner in hand. Inside, hazard lights blinked. Swirls of vapor flashed garishly in the intermittent light, vapor sublimated from the tissues of once living plants...and humans. The moisture spun into a red mist which ebbed away from him toward the outer hull. Dirt, greenery, gardening equipment and bodies all had been flung about during the explosion and subsequent decompression.

Life-signs barely registered on his scans. Twenty meters away through the lab door several still lived inside the cold-plant incubator. Only two viable life forms remained in the arboretum itself: a weak, but still viable signal a meter to his left, and another 24 meters to his right, by the hull.

Data fumbled through mist and airborne debris, slipping on fluids and moving sands until he reached the life-form closest to him. He detached a transporter positioning tag from its clip. But by touch, he could not find an undamaged surface on which to place it.

Data blinked to clear his vision of bio-matter haze and wiped his face with his sleeve.

 _Is this someone I know?_ Data winced, hoping desperately that it was not. He wiped his bloodied hand on his uniform, and carefully laid the tag in the curve of the being's lower back. He tapped the code into his PADD, initiating transport. The transporter whined and twinkled, routing the casualty to sick-bay.

The cluster of life-forms in the cooler five meters away was next. As he maneuvered through the debris Data took a reading of the breach, searching for some indication of the time he had remaining. The vacuum of space would not harm him - but if he extricated humans from their sanctuary only to face explosive decompression, they would be just as dead as if they remained in the incubator and ran out of air. 

  _There._

Through the flickering light and bio-matter haze, motion sensors showed airborne materials converging at a point on the primary starboard view-port. Spectography indicated a large mass covering most of the rupture, a mass of foamed rock composite. On the deck below it lay approximately 34 kilos of bio-matter, life-signs flickering as cells ceased to function.

While he'd managed to save one life, he'd lost another. 

Data shook his head, as if he could rattle free from the sharp pang of sorrow. He recognized the bio-signature of human death. Apparently the unknown human had managed a partial hull repair, sufficient to keep the arboretum from a full breach and decompression – but that action had exacted a terrible price.

 

                                                                  ***

 

“Emergency Intraship Transport,” the computer chimed. The sound lanced through the chatter of med techs assisting the walking wounded. Dr. Crusher felt a wind at her back – the pressure of displaced air carrying the stench of ozone and charred flesh.

Crusher spun on her heel to behold a charred form now draped atop another bio-bed, its indicators pulsing rapidly with erratic life signs, the first of the casualties beamed from the Arboretum.

Fluids dripped from the body to pool at the base of the bed. Shocked, for a half-second Crusher couldn’t move.

Dr. Selar jogged over, scanning the – was it a corpse? a living being? - with her medical tri-corder, her lips pinched thin and pale.

“Report?” Crusher said crisply, recovering aplomb as her emergency training kicked into high gear.

“The casualty appears to be a human female, burns over 95% of her body, massive fluid loss, major loss of tissue on extremities and face, but, for the moment, still living.” Selar sounded more serene than she looked.

“And?” Crusher probed. Selar was acting strangely.

The Vulcan doctor’s face paled, her jaw set hard against the struggle with her own emotions. “She’s indicating a great deal of pain telepathically,” Selar replied flatly.  “It is…distressing.”

“Some of us do project that way.” Crusher drew a hypospray, setting it to ‘mist.’ “It's rare, but some of us do.” She sprayed a topical anesthetic over the unknown woman’s surfaces. It wouldn’t last for long, but it might serve long enough to calm the Vulcan doctor.

“Anti-grav unit,” she snapped at the med-techs. “Full immersion plasma tank, human occupant, and snap in the port – stat!”

Crusher powered up the portable field sterilizer unit, and began to sweep the woman from head to foot, neutralizing any air-borne pathogens. Without skin to protect her, infection was her first and most deadly challenge.

Two male nurses wheeled the boxy unit in. Pressor fields delicately maneuvered the limp and slick-surfaced form into the plasma tank, lest contact with human hands cause more contamination. Once inside, the tank’s auto-port drove home into her femoral artery.

Selar’s fingers danced over the medi-corder. “Blood type A+,” she said.

“Set for 100% hemato-plex perfusion at a ten minute cycle,” Crusher ordered. A high-volume ‘crash-out’ of all human blood and replacement with artificial, highly oxygenated, disease resistant fluids designed to remove necrosis and clotting factors was risky, but best. The artificial blood would both keep the woman’s ravaged tissues sterile, and shut down any unnecessary urge to breathe while submerged.

“Add Ringer’s lactate 22%, maximum tri-opiates per gram body weight, and 150’cc’s De-Cort.” That took care of glucose replacement, pain management, and inflammation. Basic stabilization, then Crusher could begin to assess tissue damage, and plan the necessary strategies for rebuilding lost tissue.

      _Afterwards._

“This won’t be pretty,” she warned the Vulcan. “But full anesthetic should eliminate her distress.”

Selar nodded, her secondary eyelids contracted and almost covering her pupils, the muscles in her jaw clenching and unclenching.

The plasma tank began to pump in hemato-plex through the port--which immediately leaked from the woman’s ruptured capillaries and into the straw-colored plasma, turning it a cloudy red.  

Selar blanched as she punched in parameters on her tri-chorder. “No signs of internal bleeding.” The Vulcan struggled visibly to repress her emotions.

The viscous liquid roiled as pumps churned it through bio-filters, removing dead cells and blood. “Life signs?” Crusher said.

“Stabilizing,” Selar responded, “oxygenation within the norm, cortisol levels falling, prostaglandin levels also falling.”

 _Good._ The woman was now receiving all that was necessary for life from the plasma tank: Oxygen. Nutrients. Opiates. The hormonal signals for inflammation negated, so tissues wouldn’t swell, choking off necessary healing. Crusher scanned the woman now floating in the tank, her body beginning to spasm with shock. She tapped the PADD input on the plasma-tank’s side, adding a muscle relaxant and an anti-anxiolytic to the circulating fluids.

Without the technological wonders of a scan, no surface examination would have been able to discern her species, much less her gender. Much of her face charred to the bone, eyes and ears gone, fingers burned to stumps. Every time she’d had to treat a blast victim Crusher was surprised anew that it was possible to survive such injuries.

 

                                                                  ***

      Sorrow stabbed him, yet Data was still able to function. He continued scanning despite sadness for the ending of a human life. Other humans still lived and required his attention.

No. They _needed_ him.

A welter of gardening equipment and dying plants lay strewn throughout Keiko’s office. Atmospheric pressure inside the incubator held at 74% standard, while air pressure in the arboretum and Botany Lab now read 31%. The incubator held enough atmosphere to sustain life, but that air itself had now become a problem. Data could certainly force the incubator door and 'tag' the survivors...but doing so would subject them to violent decompression. Fragile human tissues would be battered, possibly lethally. 

His alternative was to blow the emergency atmospheric canister, equalizing air pressure in the lab long enough for Data to access the survivors, then transport them out. But would repressurization breech the lab door and shatter the viewport?

The transparent aluminum viewport was held together only by adhesives in the foamed mock-rock. It was sheer chance that atmospheric leakage had lowered the differential between ship’s pressure and the vacuum of space. That slow leak had forestalled explosive decompression.

_Barely._

In Data's estimation, such luck would not hold. Emergency repressurization would cause a full hull breach. But he had no alternative.

Data rapped his knuckles on the incubator door.  Dash-dit-dit  dit-Dash Dash dit-Dash: 'Data' in Morse code. He had no knowledge if those inside could understand that it was he--but the rhythm was purposeful enough to announce rescue was at hand. He placed his palm on the incubator, hoping for a reply.

Data felt a frantic flurry of rapping. Then one, two, three, four well spaced thumps. 

Four. _Four what?_ Wait for something to happen on the count of four?

No. The count of the number of survivors. _Four._

Four lives he would not have to watch wash away in the ripple of cellular death.  

Data would take the gamble. He would wager his speed against the lethal vacuum of space. His prize – four human lives.

Data trotted to the potting table, a large metal rectangle bolted to the decking. With a vicious yank, he wrenched it loose. He forced it through the door into the arboretum, leaned its bulky weight against the door's outer face, then squeezed through the door back into the lab. Finally, Data snaked his hand through the narrow opening to push out the bottom of the table so that the top of it fell in against the door, fully bracing the lab door shut from the outside. The bracing should hold through the first shock of repressurization. That would give Data the half-second needed to force entry into the incubator and scoop up the survivors.

      _Despite the trauma I have experienced, there are times I am grateful for my artificial construction,_ Data thought, as the table slammed into place. _And this is one of them._

A final scan showed life-signs moving to the rear of the incubator. Data braced himself against the wall, and held the canister clenched against his chest, the vent aimed outward.

Data rapped his comm-badge. “Initiate beam-out,” he said, then threw the switch.

.43331 seconds remained.

Human eyes would see only the brief flash of the canister venting, a ruptured door and shattered view-port. Then plants, sand, and bodies would vent out into the depths of space. 

But with Data’s android processing speed, plants, tools, and debris appeared to spin slowly in the vortex of expanding air. The canister broke loose from his grip, twirling as it arced away. The lab door began to slam against his makeshift bracing, bulging in the beginnings of its outward explosion into the arboretum, but Data was already in motion. 

. 37 seconds. Faster than the office door could shatter, Data pushed into the incubator, and aimed for the small pile of humans huddled at the back of it.

_Keiko was alive!_

The office door ripped free, a gradual explosion of metal flying out into the arboretum. 

He had .2775 seconds until beam-out. He activated ionic potentia in his musculature, increasing his movements to top possible speed.

Before she had registered his presence, Data lifted Keiko and the cluster of small bodies in her lap up from the floor.

At .15 seconds, the transporter beam began to shimmer. Plants leaned toward the door as the first hard fingers of vacuum grabbed them. Keiko began to tense as her body registered being lifted.

At .063 seconds, Data thrust clear of the incubator, into the locus of the transporter.

The viewport crumpled outwards, transparent aluminum slowly shattering into a spray of glitter.

At .057 seconds, the lab dissolved in the blue shimmer of the transporter beam.

 

                                                                              ***

The computer announced another intra-ship transport. Crusher turned to face the new arrival.

 _Data._ The android was spattered with sand, bits of plants, body fluids. A streak of blood marked his uniform. Keiko lay in his arms, her face white with pain. Cradled in her lap, a cluster of small children began to cough. Yellow tears trickled as Data blinked foreign matter from his eyes.

“You did it!” she whooped, waving him into the arms of the med-techs.

Data’s chin tilted up, the corners of his lips curving in self-satisfaction as they relieved him of his burdens, gently extricating first one, two, then three small bodies from Keiko's arms. Each child disappeared behind a swarm of techs with med-sensors, the hiss of hyposprays and the murmur of diagnoses filling Sick-Bay.

Data placed Keiko on the bio-bed with care. She clutched his hand as she hacked and coughed, her face raw and bruised.

The hypospray hissed as Crusher injected her with tri-ox. She glanced up at Keiko’s bio-readings. A nasty line of vacuum bruising down one leg. Fractured wrist, two fractured ribs. Sprains indicative of hyperextension of the left shoulder. Lung edema from breathing partial vacuum. Crusher switched the hypo-spray to analgesic. 

As the injections took effect, Keiko sagged back against the bio-bed. “Tell Miles I'm O.K,” she rasped, still clinging to Data's hand. “He’s off-duty, with Molly.”

Data smiled down at her, then said, “Save your breath to heal.”

The transporter whined again. _More casualties,_ Crusher thought.

The walking wounded had already been treated. The missing five had been retrieved. The viewport blown and arboretum depressurized, techs had transported into Section 17 and would now be bringing in the dead.

_But what was wrong with Data?_

He shuddered as if something were amiss with his servomotors. Crusher had been so busy with the human casualties that she hadn’t stopped to consider if Data had been harmed as well. 

“What is it? Are you damaged?” she asked as she scanned him. But Data's functions read nominal. Puzzled, she followed the line of his gaze.

A man in an Engineering EVA suit carried the body of a scrawny young woman, her skin dull gray, bruised limbs flopping with the limpness that only the dead could demonstrate. Twin lines of dark blood streamed from her nostrils.

Crusher recognized her immediately. _Zari_. Data's friend, and mentee.

“I'm so sorry,” Crusher said, and placed a hand his shoulder. She desperately wished it possible to comfort him with her touch.

A look of horror distorted the smooth planes of Data’s face. “I do seem to be undergoing .... programmatic … damage...” he replied, his voice incongruously soft. He reached out his hand as if to touch Zari's body. 

A tiny servomotor whined, and Data twitched. His hand dropped to his side.

“I must go,” he said. “My presence is required in Engineering.”

Data turned to depart, the planes of his face now smooth and cold, his eyes empty.


End file.
